prelude.

Of all the things Noire considered herself to be, an idiot wasn't usually one of them, but as she was staring at her parents mid-argument, them both ready to start flinging curses at each other for the sake of proving their point, she felt unusually stupid about what she'd started. She thought she was rather sneaky when it came to writing out letters to get one of them (typically her father) to carry out revenge for the sake of her friends, but something had gone wrong this time and they were ready to duel to the death about how they were going to handle her newest request.

All she wanted to do in that moment was scream at them to stop what they were about to do to each other and take their frustrations out on her, but a soft voice in her mind was telling her to rethink that decision. To stay out of the mess she'd created and forge her own path in regards to what she felt she needed to do. There had been a reason she'd slipped that letter in her father's newest tome, after all, and if he wasn't going to go through with the request, whether it was his call or her mother's, she needed to just go through with it herself.

The first time she'd done something like this she'd worded it in such a way to protect someone she cared about while still teaching her a lesson, and she supposed it must've been weird for her father to see that person's name come up in this newest request. Closing her eyes tightly as the yelling between her parents grew to a near-deafening roar, Noire told herself right then that she wasn't going to task either of them with anything like this again for a long time.

She was a child of two fearsome dark mages, of course she was capable of causing mayhem with her own two hands. It was just going to be difficult to execute in the same way one of her parents would've been able to do it, but what was life without a challenge? Noire wasn't an idiot, she really wasn't, and she was going to prove it with her own method of teaching someone a lesson.

i.

Gerome rubbed at the reddened spot on his wrist, from where he'd been forced into a death grip for what had felt like hours but had really been nothing more than ten long minutes being pulled down to the stable where he kept his dear wyvern Minerva safe and sound. "Next time, please refrain from laying a hand on me," he muttered, staring down the reason for the rawness he felt. "I could have easily gotten the idea to come here without you dragging me."

"I'm sorry, I just got super excited!" Clasping her hands in front of her face with a giggle, Cynthia tilted her head to one side, her wide eyes focused on the mask on Gerome's face, obscuring how displeased he was with her in the moment. "Come on, it's not every day that we get exactly twelve hours of light to fly in the skies, we've got to take advantage of it while we can!"

He twisted his mouth as he thought about how to reply, not wanting to crush her feelings by pointing out that the days before and after the current one had very nearly twelve hours of light as well (and he wasn't positive it was actually twelve hours of light that day). She was a great friend, someone that he found himself enjoying spending time with, but there were moments like this where it made him wish he could go back to other friends and significant others he'd left behind for various reasons. "You're eager to go flying when sunrise has barely happened, are you certain we'll want to spend all day in the air? Minerva can handle the task but can your pegasus? Where is your pegasus, anyway?"

Freezing momentarily as she turned to look behind her, towards the stable, Cynthia's answer came after a loud whistle, which was followed with a loud neighing sound from the other side of the building. "I must've tied her up on the other side, oh well, but she's here! I didn't forget to bring my noble steed for our day of adventure and fun!"

"That answers one of the questions, now what about the other?" Already unamused due to the early wake-up call, Gerome was hoping that Cynthia had some answer that was at least partially acceptable to the first thing he'd asked, now that she'd answered the second thing fairly well. "I'm not tasking Minerva with flying for twelve straight hours, not when she has no reason to be treated in such a manner."

"We won't be flying the whole time, our friends can have breaks while we eat lunch and maybe dinner too! Now come on, the sky's getting lighter and we're just standing here wasting time talking!" Jumping to action, Cynthia looked like she was about to run around the stable to let her pegasus loose, and while Gerome didn't fully accept what she'd said he wasn't going to keep being a drain on what she wanted to do. She at least had some plan for how their day was meant to be spent, and what kind of friend would he be if he didn't let her at least try to make things happen her way?

ii.

Way up in the sky a few minutes later, the pair and their mounts were greeted with a brilliant sunrise over the Ylissean landscape, something that Gerome found beauty in now that he had a chance to see it in a positive situation. All the other times he'd been up in the air at such an early hour, he'd been rushing somewhere, or fighting for his life, or thinking about fleeing the country to go spend time at the wyvern valley, and now that he was flying without something negative or pressing on his mind, he was enjoying it more than he thought he would. "Isn't it gorgeous?" Cynthia asked, sounding breathless as she looked upon the same sight he was seeing. "My mom always tells me about how nice the mornings are on days like today, and I never thought she'd be so right about them."

"It's decent, I suppose." Gerome could feel the chill in the air, the early morning just cold enough to make him wish he'd had the foresight to bundle up before getting pulled into this mess. "I still see no point to this, however. If you wanted to watch the sunrise with me, we could have done it elsewhere that didn't involve taking flight. I'm sure Minerva doesn't appreciate the cold, and neither do I."

"Could you maybe stop being such a grumpy grump? She's enjoying it way more than you are, because she's not whining about it being a bit cold!" Nothing seemed to be bothering Cynthia more about what they were doing than Gerome's attitude towards it, and she wanted him to know it. "It'll get warmer as it gets later, it always does! You should've thought better about dressing with layers when I came to get you, there's no one to blame for what you're wearing but yourself!" Laughing, she tugged at the large sweater she was wearing, almost as if she was teasing him for not having thought to do the same. "Don't worry, if you get too cold I guess we could go back and get you something nice to wear. I bet I have a matching fluffy sweater for you!"

"I think I'd prefer to freeze from my own 'ignorance' than wear one of your sweaters," he muttered, tightening the grip of his legs on Minerva's back. "Let's just keep doing what we're already doing, I suppose. No sense in prolonging the inevitable, even if it means spending all of the daylight hours up here with you rather than doing anything productive."

"You're just mad I woke you up before sunrise, you can go ahead and say it." Continuing on with her teasing, Cynthia had stopped fidgeting with her sweater and was instead just looking at Gerome with a smile on her face, hoping to break him from his bad mood somehow. "I know you probably didn't go to sleep until a little bit before I woke you up, so you're super tired, but you can stop taking it out on me. I'm just here to make your life a little bit better!"

As much as he wanted to say it, he couldn't bring himself to tell her that his life would be a lot better that day if she hadn't been trying to involve him in one of her strange plans. This "spending all day flying" thing would work perfectly as a solo event, she didn't need someone—especially not him—along for the ride.

iii.

Riding alongside one another as the air started to gradually warm up, Gerome found himself watching intently for the moment when Cynthia would decide that she was too hot to keep wearing her sweater and that she needed to take it off. He wasn't going to let her do that without supervision, therefore making that single task the one thing he was needed for while up in the sky. If she was more focused on getting her sweater off than flying, there was the chance that her pegasus would start doing its own thing, and he needed to make sure that nothing of the sort happened.

At about the same time that she started looking kind of uncomfortable, and he was considering asking her if they needed to get lower so she could safely remove her unnecessary layer of clothing, what sounded like the scream of someone being attacked down below wafted up to their ears. "Should we go check on that?" she asked, her face beginning to redden slightly as her body was getting too warm. "I mean, least we can do is do a fly-by and see if everyone's okay, yeah?"

"Always wanting to play the hero," he replied, maintaining a stone-faced expression as he spoke. "I suppose it's something we can do, if you really insist." There was going to be no talking her out of what she wanted to do, especially if it meant helping others, but something felt strange about the scream they'd heard, almost as if it was a scream he'd heard many times before. But they'd been flying for hours at that point, there was no way they'd happened upon someone they were familiar with.

As they began to descend to check the surrounding area for any issues, Gerome found himself focusing more on the scream itself rather than what it could have meant—and therefore he was caught completely by surprise when another, louder one pierced the air right next to him. His eyes shot right over to where Cynthia had been, finding that he couldn't see her at all anymore, and his heart sank. Calling out her name a couple times, he leaned over on Minerva's back to check below him, and that was where he found her flying, an obvious arrow lodged in her shoulder. "Someone hit me!" she cried, her altitude steadily falling and him jumping to follow her down. "They hit me and not my pegasus but I've been hit, and all I wanted to do was be helpful!"

"Go fly back to where everyone else is, someone will help you heal up there." His command came with a slightly shaky voice, not wanting to send her away but knowing that she'd never forgive him if they both turned back. "You can find me out here once you're patched up, I'll be searching for the brigand who decided to use you as a target and teach them a lesson about harming my friend."

"Gerome, I…okay, I'll go back. Be safe though, please." There was dejection in Cynthia's voice, her perfect day in the air ruined by herself being attacked (not even her mount, which was strange for Gerome to think about but he couldn't dwell on it), but she followed his direction and started back towards where they'd come from. He continued descending towards the forest below, knowing that at any moment he could become the next target for the rogue archer sending arrows into the sky.

What he didn't expect was that he'd already correctly suspected something was amiss, and that he was about to come face-to-face with the reality of it all.

iv.

All Gerome had expected when he made his way down to the ground was finding someone with an arrow ready to fly in his direction; he was therefore caught off-guard and slightly surprised when it was Noire standing there, doing the honors that he'd been expecting. "You came here alone," she said, breathless at the sight of her best friend and his wyvern descending in front of her. "You weren't supposed to do that! Where's Cynthia, where's that friend-stealing little who—"

"I'll have to ask you to refrain from referring to her in such a manner, as she's done nothing wrong to you. Why are you out here?" The fact that she was the one who had shot the arrow into the sky was not lost on him, but Gerome knew better than to outright accuse Noire of anything even remotely negative, unless he wanted to get an earful from her about it. "Camp's miles away from here, it makes no sense for you to be out this far on your own." It made perfect sense for it, but again he needed to choose his words (and therefore his battles) very carefully. "Shall we ride back together and inform your parents of what you're doing?"

"They didn't want me doing this, they fought about me asking for it to be done and I hated it," she meekly said, dropping her bow to the ground and letting her head hang down in shame. "So I told myself that I'd learn how to handle things myself, I'd learn magic just enough to use it against someone who was wronging me, and then we'd be good and everything would go back to normal."

Knowing that she was preparing herself for letting loose on him, Gerome knew this to be his opportunity to make his accusation and leave it out in the open. Without giving her any more of a chance to explain her actions, he bluntly told her, "You shot an arrow into the sky at someone we both know, that doesn't exactly scream 'magic usage' to me."

"Did I ask you to recap what I did to your stupid friend?" Noire's voice had changed, becoming angrier and louder, as she looked up at him with her eyes shining, her mouth twisted into a nasty grin. "No, I'm fairly certain I didn't, so silence, scum!"

"Explain to me why you chose to aim at Cynthia, who's done nothing wrong to anyone we know." Noire's mouth opened to give that explanation and he held up a finger to silence her before she said a word. "Just don't call her names or say she stole anything from you, none of that's true and we both know it."

"It's…it's…very true!" she hissed, volume rising to loud enough that Gerome actually had to cover his ears to block out the sound. "She took my best friend from me and I'm never going to forgive her for it!"

v.

It took a few moments of glaring at Noire for Gerome to finally know how to react to her outburst and her string of lies. "I don't know why you insist that you've been wronged here, I haven't replaced you nor do I have any intentions of doing so," he said, pushing his mask up off of his face to show that he meant business. "You've turned this whole situation into a problem in your own mind, and now you've gone too far by making it a physical issue."

"Too far? I wasn't the one up in the sky canoodling with some has-been wannabe hero! You betrayed me by picking to spend all your time with her!" Noire was still yelling, but it wasn't like Gerome had assumed she'd have stopped by then; in fact, he was certain this was just the beginning of the earful he was meant to get. "You didn't even like being around her until recently, when you decided you were going to pick her over me for everything! Cynthia this, Cynthia that, it's always about Cynthia now and I can't stand it!"

"Deep breaths, Noire, you're losing control over nothing." While he could entertain her argument that he was spending a lot of time with Cynthia, it was not something he'd chosen to do on his own terms, and all of their time together had been at Cynthia's urging, not his own. "She's a friend, a close friend at this point, but she won't replace you. Swear on Minerva's life that's the case."

It was a drastic move to swear on the one life he treasured more than his own, but even that wasn't enough to get Noire to back down from her angry stance. "You'd kill your dumb wyvern a million times over before you'd admit that you're lying to me, you jerk," she spat, her words feeling like rough slaps across the cheek to Gerome as he pulled his mask back down to hide how much what she'd said bothered him. "Just come clean, tell me all about your sick fantasies involving her, then let me kill her so you can be mine again!"

"Touch another hair on her head and I'll do the honors of murdering you instead. Cynthia has done nothing wrong to you by being my friend and you are being ridiculous." His threat was meaningless, but he knew that hers might not have been, and getting her to drop the subject and move onto something else was key to solving the situation. "You aren't acting like yourself right now, Noire, you've let a nonsense issue take over your mind and you're being simply unreasonable. Think about what you're doing."

"That's what my father said when I told him I wanted to do this, that I needed to think about it more before I did anything. That's why I taught myself some of the darkest dark magic my parents have ever used, so I can make you pay on my own terms. Won't let me kill Cynthia, fine! She's going to die anyway, just you wait." Noire's voice was starting to waver as her angry side was beginning to lose control over her mind, but she still had enough left in her to give one of the more cryptic messages her screaming-self had ever given. "You're going to live this day again, and you're going to face this same problem and next time, there's not going to be any saving her from me. Unless, of course, you ditch her forever."
"Sure, Noire, whatever helps you sleep at night." It was pointless to keep fighting with her, especially when she was making such stupid threats, but something about the conviction she spoke with had rattled Gerome a bit deeper than he felt it should have. He refused to say anything further to her, choosing to mount Minerva's back and fly off into the sky, knowing exactly where it was he needed to go. He needed to find where Cynthia had gone to find help after being shot, and he needed to hope that wherever she'd gone, they'd had the courtesy to treat her well.

vi.

"Well, I guess that's how I ended up seeing the very arrow that pierced my shoulder get thrown right back in someone's face," Cynthia finished with a smile, back up in the sky on Minerva, her arms wrapped around Gerome's upper body. "It's not much of a story, but I figured you'd appreciate hearing how it all played out. So what happened with you, fighting those brigands on your own? Were you able to kick their butts into next week?"

"Something like that, if you can even call it such." He didn't want to tell her that it had been Noire who'd shot her, or the reason for the incident to begin with, and he was going to stay far away from the cryptic message that they were going to live that same event over again in the future. It meant nothing, she was speaking meaningless words, and he'd been friends with her long enough to know that she wasn't going to act on what she'd said. "I was able to convince them to leave us alone with some skilled axe-swinging, I would say that's all that matters about it."

She gave a sigh that he could feel on his back, her breath warmer than the air they were now flying in. "I wish I could've been there to see it, I always love watching you fight, and I hate that you were having to fight someone for me. Next time, I'm not running away to get healed, I'm going to fight whoever decided to hurt me for myself!"

"If there's a next time. Let's not think there will be." Hopefully there wouldn't be one, hopefully Noire would've learned her lesson about attacking other people that Gerome was close with and Cynthia wouldn't ever be targeted like that again, but there was no guarantee that the same incident wouldn't rear its ugly head at them in the future.

She didn't seem deterred by his outlook on the situation, one that was surprisingly positive despite his usually negative nature. "Come on, Gerome, you know I really want to get to be the hero sometime, why not defending my own honor? I think it's best for people to fight for themselves, so I want to be able to do it!"

He was never going to have the heart to tell her that the person who'd shot her had done it intentionally with the desire to see her dead, and he could only hope that she'd never find that part out elsewhere. Gerome was going to protect this girl with everything he had, no matter how far out of his comfort zone it was going to take him, and he wasn't going to let Noire touch another hair on her head. If she couldn't handle him having friends that weren't her, he wasn't going to consider no longer being her friend a large loss.

Things usually didn't happen that easily, though, not when someone involved really insisted on getting their way, no matter the cost.

interlude.

Lessons were rather hard to teach to stubborn archers whose parents were two dark mages who enjoyed causing problems just as often as they liked trying to solve them. This was more true for Henry than it was for Tharja, because he tended to lean more towards the "causing problems" side of things whereas his wife preferred to help out in roundabout ways, but when it came to fixing Noire's messes they never could seem to agree on what to do. After all, it was an agreement they'd come to that had caused her to resort to slinging her own curses, and now it was an agreement that was going to put an end to that.

"She's gotten skilled with magic, I have to say, but she's not supposed to be using it. She wasn't raised a mage, I'm sure, so she doesn't get to start pretending to be one." Her nose buried in a tome that claimed to have solutions to all sorts of belligerent child issues, Tharja sounded unamused and bored as she spoke. "Especially not when she's threatening to harm others with what she wants to do. Have you heard what she attempted on that wyvern boy?"

"His name is Gerome, he's had dinner with us a few times, and yes, I did hear what she tried doing to him. Causing someone to live the same day again? What a joke!" Cackling as he thought about what he'd just said, Henry saw Tharja looking at him over her book, shaking her head at how he was losing himself in laughter. "What, it's true, I don't even think I could do that without there being something weird that happened instead! Like, what if she's managed to curse everyone else into living that same day? How funny would that be?"

Without blinking, Tharja replied, "Absolutely hilarious, but you're right, it's a joke that wouldn't happen, not with her. I've tried to cause the repeated day effect on people a few times to no avail, I don't think a pretend mage could do it without practice."

"There's that negative spirit shining through, always love when you decide you're going to back me up by reminding me how hopeless our daughter is!" Still laughing, Henry brought a hand to his face as he began wiping tears from his eyes. "I love it so much, look I'm crying over how much I love this!"

"Yes, naturally you love our so-called child being a failure at what she's insisting she can do." Her face going back to behind her book, Tharja didn't seem interested in anything else Henry was going to have to say to her. As far as she was concerned, talking more about what Noire wanted to pretend she could do was a waste of time when there was researching that could be done about how to correct these behaviors. She couldn't let her future daughter attempt to upstage her as a dark mage.

Pulling off a day replication spell to perfection? Impossible, and she knew it, yet she found herself debating the what-if about the whole thing—what if Noire somehow did manage to create the impossible and make someone live the same day twice? "I know what you're thinking," Henry said with a sing-song tone, his head knocking side to side as he tried getting Tharja's attention once more, "and there's no reason for it. Noire's always had to come to us to get stuff done, that wouldn't ever change no matter what. Her little spell's going to backfire and it'll be Mommy and Daddy having to jump in to rescue her from herself!"

"I beg you, never refer to us in such a way again," she deadpanned, not bothering to look from her book as she spoke. "I hear those words from your mouth in the future and you'll wish you never crossed me. Understood?" She didn't look, but she knew he was giving her the quickest nod possible, and that was the exact response she was expecting from him in that exact moment.

vii.

"I'm fairly certain we've had this conversation before," Gerome grumbled, having just been dragged out in the light of early dawn to where his Minerva was kept, a pegasus shoddily tied up right outside her special stable. "Why does it feel so familiar to me, to be pulled against my will to do some riding with you because—"

"There's exactly twelve hours of light to fly in the skies, we've got to take advantage of it while we can!" Beaming as she spoke, unaware that she'd said the exact same words exactly six months before, Cynthia motioned towards her pegasus with her head, before her expression soured looking at Gerome's complete confusion, him glancing around, going so far as to lift his mask slightly to get a better look at her with narrowed eyes. "What's got you so grumpy today, you usually love an excuse to kick back and cruise over the countryside with me! Why don't you look like you're happy about this?"

Putting his mask back down, he shook his head at her. "You must have ignored what I said because you were so busy thinking about what it was you want to do with me. I told you, we've had this conversation before, down to your whole 'twelve hours of light' bit. Don't you recall us standing here before, talking just like this?"

"Can't say that I do," she replied, her face going back to cheerful immediately after speaking. "Now let's get to flying, I don't want to waste a second of our perfectly perfect day together, up in the clouds without any cares at all!" Her positivity was grating on Gerome's ears, but that was something that he usually looked past because of how much he enjoyed being in Cynthia's presence. This time, however, something felt amiss and he wasn't going to let things be wrong without him calling them out.

One small similarity in a situation wasn't reason for concern, though, and he couldn't let his mind jump to negative conclusions, yet he had a sinking feeling building within him that was telling him it was only going to get worse from there. Words from that same day six months ago were ringing through his mind, Noire's voice echoing that he'd have to live with his choice another time unless he stopped spending time with Cynthia, but there was no reason to think she'd really meant that. Noire was just an archer with a temper, she had no way of causing someone to live the same day a second time.

viii.

Time really did seem to be repeating itself, based on how the start of the morning went, and when Gerome and Cynthia were high in the sky and the air started heating up, his mind jumped back to what had happened before; he wasn't going to let his friend get shot this time, not when she didn't deserve it. "Hey, Cynthia, mind if we double-back and head the other way for a while?" he suggested, thinking about how they must've been getting really close to where Noire had shot at them last time. "Minerva senses that something is amiss up ahead and I'd rather not see what it is."

"Aw, but you know I love getting to be someone's hero," she grumbled, yet she made sure to get her pegasus to turn midair so they could start going back the direction in which they'd came. "While we're still up here, mind if I get my sweater off? It's starting to get hot under it and I don't want to get too sweaty, you know?"

"I understand completely, go ahead and take care of that." Thankful that she was going to get to make that decision for herself and not have other plans forced upon her as she considered doing it, Gerome kept a careful eye on her and her pegasus as she removed her sweater, tying it around her waist once it was off. "There, you might have been warmer in the early hours but once the cold faded you were miserable, weren't you?"

Her silence told him that he was right, but within moments she was ready to move on with another silly idea. "Let's have a race to see how fast our mount can move! I'm sure that your precious Minervykins is probably so tired at this point, so let's do this!"

"E-excuse me, no one calls her that except my mother!" His retort came too slow, as she was already starting to speed off through the sky, and he had to save his arguing for another time and try playing catch-up with her. This was the problem with letting Cynthia control the day, she was quick to do whatever she wanted without much thought about what anyone else thought was appropriate. And given that Gerome had lived this day before, perhaps it would've been best for her to give listening to him a try.

ix.

Trying to keep a calm face once they'd met back up, what felt like miles of high-speed flying behind them, Cynthia seemed to be bursting at the seams with excitement despite having just pushed her faithful pegasus far beyond her normal limits of flight speed. "I think we're going to have to land for a bit," she told Gerome once they were flying alongside one another once more. "Not because anything's wrong, but because I think I saw something shiny down on the ground and I kinda want to explore it, if that's cool with you."

"So much for twelve daylight hours in the sky, but that sounds fair to me. If anything, it'll be a good break for Minerva and your pegasus before we take to the skies again." It couldn't be that he'd lived this exact day before, Gerome realized, if Cynthia was offering to go land rather than stick to her original plan for the day. In suggesting that they go a different direction, he'd changed the outcome of the day and therefore didn't need to worry too much about what was going to happen, because there was no chance of the same arrow-filled fate happening to his friend. It was strange that she didn't remember having been shot while attempting an all-day fly before, but he didn't want to bring that up and find it to be a memory she'd repressed or something.

To go along with his friend's wishes, they began descending back to the ground, their mounts moving as fast as they could with the limited energy they still had. This spot they were approaching wasn't somewhere Gerome remembered being before, it was near their base camp but it wasn't anywhere close to where Noire must've been waiting with her arrows primed for shooting pegasi out of the skies. "I really hope the shiny thing isn't someone's jewelry, it would really suck to have lost that," Cynthia said to herself, as she began descending faster than Gerome was, the excitement of finding some mystery treasure beginning to override her desire to have a day out with her friend. "I've gotta be the one to return it, if it is a lost ring or something special like that!"

He wasn't even paying attention to the fact that he couldn't hear what she was saying anymore, merely watching Cynthia head back towards the ground safely was enough to cause a smile to crack its way onto Gerome's face. He might have been dragged into this same event for the second time, but she didn't know that was the case, and she certainly had no idea that she was meant to have a murder attempt on her life that day.

The distraction of watching her approach the ground was enough to keep him from noticing the blast of wind magic spiraling right towards him, connecting with Minerva's wings and sending her down to the ground with her rider still on her back. Gerome didn't have the time to react to what was happening until he was beneath his wyvern as they fell to the ground, hitting the upper layer of trees to cushion their fall…

x.

Falling from the sky wasn't what he'd expected he'd end up doing that day, yet there he and Minerva ended up being, tangled amongst the branches of one of the taller trees in the area. He didn't know what had happened, one moment he was watching Cynthia and the next he was falling, but one thing was for certain: whatever had caused the accident wasn't an arrow, which meant it most likely was not Noire's doing. This was entirely unrelated to her quest for vengeance, meaning that the world just had it out for poor Gerome that day.

"Goodness, are you alive up there?" a familiar voice asked, but where it was familiar from made it a surprise to hear. He'd been expecting it to be Cynthia, or possibly Noire, finding him where he was and trying to make sense of what had happened, since they were both such great friends of his. Instead, he was listening to one Laurent ask him if he was alive. "I was unaware that I needed to be mindful of my aim, no one gave the forewarning that there would be aerial practice above today."

"We weren't practicing, we were having a casual flying session." Trying to get himself and his wyvern both out of the tree without causing too much damage to either of them, Gerome couldn't be bothered to look down at Laurent wherever it was that he was standing. "Next time don't throw your spells up into the air, hm? Might do you better if you're aiming at something, not trying to kill anything that flies over."

"Noted, although your informative tone could use some work. Right now you speak as if you're incredibly…upset with me." Laurent's way of presenting the obvious was usually done in ways that Gerome didn't understand, so the fact that he was using simpler words meant that something was going on. "Shall I assist you in untangling yourself and your Minerva from the tree, or will you handle it yourself as usual?"

"Help would be appreciated, I'd hate to break Minerva more than you already did." Gerome knew that Minerva was going to be fine, it was a weak (yet intentionally-aimed, he was sure of it) spell that had collided with them, judging by how there wasn't a drop of blood anywhere on either of them. "Do you know how to climb a tree, or are we relying on more of your magic?"

Laurent answered by throwing his robes to the ground, cringing at how much dust they kicked up. "I've done my fair share of climbing trees," he admitted, which was a fair ending point for the statement, except this was Laurent that was talking. "Usually it happens to find a higher vantage point to surprise enemy forces from, but occasionally I've taken to scaling trees to find quiet, high places to do some light reading."

"Less talking, more climbing, we can't spend all day here in this tree."

xi.

Trees really were high and quiet places to spend time, and Gerome hadn't realized just how high in that tree they really were. It took several minutes for Laurent to be able to climb up far enough, sans hat and robes, to be able to be at the same level as the man and his wyvern, and even then once he was there he seemed at a loss as to what to do. "If we extricate you from between these branches, there is a large chance of the supporting branches snapping from beneath one or both of us, Minerva being unscathed as she has wings. Perhaps the best course of action here would be for her to be freed, then for you to follow suit. Acceptable?"

"I'm not the big-brained smart guy around here, if you think it'll work then go for it. I'm done talking about this until it's over." True to his word, Gerome didn't say anything else in Laurent's direction until they were in the process of letting Minerva down safely to the ground, and even then all he said was not to drop her. From there, it was silence once more, only the sounds of the branches crackling and shifting beneath them; this changed once Gerome was able to freely move his whole body without being trapped anywhere. "Thank you for fixing the mess you made, wouldn't have needed it if it weren't for you."

"Yes, and I apologize for being careless with my practicing. Haven't you ever swung an axe at the wrong target and had to atone for that mistake?" Gerome stared blankly at Laurent after giving that example, not sure if he wanted to give the honest answer or not, and Laurent sighed, shaking his head as he moved to start descending the tree. "Apologies again, I temporarily forgot that your stoicism and internalized perfection prevent you from admitting that you too have flaws."

"Someone told you to practice in this spot, didn't they?" Moving past what had just been said without bothering to acknowledge it, Gerome was going to get to the bottom of what was going on. "You said before that no one warned you that you needed to be careful of people flying overhead. Why would you say that, unless someone told you to be here?"

"It was suggested to me as a good practice spot, from someone who knew that you could access relatively clear skies from certain parts on the ground. I heeded her suggestion and—"

Gerome cut him off with a cough, which was done into a closed fist. "'Her.' You mean Noire, don't you?" The lack of response he got required him to look to Laurent, sitting there with a hand poised on his glasses so that he could adjust them as he was talking, but he seemed frozen in place. "Go on, tell me what you know from her, tell me what she's said about me and about what you needed to do. No secrets between friends."

"I would not consider us friends by any means, but you are correct in your accusation that the 'her' I spoke of was Noire. She approached me earlier this week asking if I would be interested in knowing of the best practice spot and timeframe in which to use it. As I tend to spend my time with the hypotheticals and not the practical application, her advice was appreciated and I thought it would be good to put it to use." Exactly as he seemed ready to do, Laurent pushed his glasses higher up onto his face before scowling. "Are you going to tell me that she anticipated your flight and wanted me to take you down? That's absurd, she has no way of telling the future of such a small event."

"Listen to me, she knew exactly what was going to happen because she set it up. I just…don't get how I was meant to be the target, when she was so furious about someone else." Gerome tilted his head back to look at the impact crater he and Minerva had caused in the tree's highest branches, the canopy broken with a wyvern-sized hole. "But who cares, we're alive and she didn't win. That's what matters, I'd say."

"Such positive words from you, I'm impressed." Laughing, Laurent's face brightened and he reached over to gently pat Gerome's arm. "Now would you do this inquisitive soul a favor and enlighten me on what's happened so far?"

xii.

Far enough from where the two men were to be blissfully unaware of what was going on, Cynthia had found her shiny object and was looking at it with narrowed eyes. "I know this is a part of a sword's blade, but how does someone lose the tip of their sword with no sign of any other part of it around? Silly swordfighters, always so bad at their jobs." She tossed the part of the blade aside and giggled to herself as she got back on her pegasus. "I was really hoping I'd get to be a hero this time, but I guess it wasn't meant to happen. That's what you're always telling me, isn't that right Gerome?"

For the first time since she landed, she realized that Gerome wasn't behind her anymore, and a wave of panic overtook her. "Oh gods, what happened? Did you fly off without me?" Not sure where she should start looking, in case he wasn't still in the area, she had to calm herself down from a rising panic before making the decision to go back to where they'd started their day and check around there before going elsewhere. Naturally, it was her and her pegasus taking to the sky that alerted the other two still in the tree of her position, but they weren't going to be able to call to her to get her attention.

"That's definitely Cynthia going somewhere that's not here," Gerome remarked, while Laurent nodded in agreement. "Oh well, guess that's the end of her twelve hours of flying together. Don't know why she wanted to do that. Definitely wish I hadn't been dragged into it twice."

"It astounds me that you have clear memories of the first time these events occurred, although your foresight did not allow you to figure out when they might happen again." Having restored his robes and his hat to their normal ways of being worn, Laurent adjusted his glasses before motioning his head towards where Minerva was sitting in a clearing nearby, waiting for her rider to come back to her. "This concept of twelve hours of flight seems absurd and nearly impossible, why would you dare try it a second time?"

"Cynthia's my friend and I'm not the world's largest jerk to brush her off about things such as this. She wants to ride for hours, we can ride for hours, Minerva would do good to have the exercise." While he was thankful they'd made it out of the tree safely, part of Gerome wished they hadn't left it yet, because being out of the tree meant having to go back to what he'd been doing before. He was kind of enjoying talking to Laurent as he was, having an incredulous pair of ears listening to what he was saying and processing it as if it were really possible. "Noire tried taking her down twice and failed both times because of the very reason she was targeting her in the first place. How sad is that?"

Pausing to think about the actual percentages and probabilities and whatnot of what he'd just heard, Laurent ultimately shrugged as he began walking towards Minerva. "I cannot say with certainty how sad it is, but I can say that you've surprised me by making the best of it. Perhaps you're not as stoic and standoffish as I pegged you to be, and perhaps I would be interested to get to know you further." They looked at each other after the words finished lingering in the air, Gerome waiting for what he figured was coming next while Laurent made sure it was really what he wanted to suggest. He did decide to go for it, and so he asked, "Mind adding to the twelve hours with me along, Gerome?"

postlude.

Moments where someone realized that they were in over their head and that they needed to back away from a situation weren't exactly fun to be part of, yet that was what Noire found herself involved in after what she'd tried doing backfired spectacularly on her. She'd been so certain that rigging events to make sure that someone brought her supposed "greatest enemy" down would bring her happiness, but after all was said and done she was left standing in the wake of a new friendship being forged. Never once had she expected Laurent to work on befriending Gerome, because she'd always thought he'd be blasting Cynthia from the skies and dealing with her.

That was what happened, though, and now she had two problems to handle in regards to her friendship with Gerome, as he now had more friends that she felt comfortable with him having. While it was okay to guess that he wasn't going to flat-out replace her with Laurent like he totally had been trying to with Cynthia, she was still wary that this new friendship was going to severely cut into her time spent with her best friend. What was a girl to do in that situation, after her drastic method of handling it had failed her?

Whatever it was, it probably needed to involve a lot less vengeance and a lot more understanding of situations, but that was something she needed to work on. Maybe at some point in the future, after she'd mended all bridges she'd burnt and stopped thinking everyone was trying to ruin her life (because she wasn't an idiot about things, ever), she'd find some relationship she felt comfortable with. Until then, it was time to fight for her best friend's time, something that she was going to do that she couldn't ever really say she was proud of.

A/N: an étude is a short composition that requires skill on the part of the performer, that requires intense practice

Last year I wrote a fic about "what happens on the solstice day" and this year I wrote one about "what happens on the equinox day". that being said, happy equinox day, everyone.